Harvesting and processing of fruits and vegetables such as whole peppers is typically labor intensive. For example, when whole peppers are picked, they are usually hand graded in the field. Likewise, de-stemming is a labor intensive process to remove the stem and the calyx of the pepper from the pepper pod. De-stemming may be done in the field at harvest, or may be done by hand during processing of the whole peppers, typically before the whole peppers are processed for products, such as salsa, or are processed further, such as being canned.
A trend in the agriculture industry is the increase in labor costs and the continuing effort to find low cost labor, typically migrant or seasonal laborers. However, the availability of this low cost labor source has recently diminished. This decrease in the availability of cost effective local labor can create challenges to a grower's ability to harvest and process whole peppers. In addition, processing may be outsourced to foreign countries where labor may be available at low cost, but adding transportation costs to the total cost of processing. It might be advantageous to grow and economically process fruits and vegetables such as peppers locally, so that freshness is Improved and transportation costs minimized.